Infectious Diseases Are Making a Comeback

Back in the middle ages, most people didn't live long enough to get many chronic diseases. Yeah, there probably was heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, but the biggest cause of death back then was infection, both from bacteria and viruses. Influenza epidemics killed millions of people and the bubonic plague wiped out a third of Europe.

And doctors had no idea what was causing all of this sickness and death. They thought that it was vapors or evil spirits, or worse yet, God. They must have done something really evil to receive such dreadful punishment from up above.

Some even saw the demons and spirits, probably from the hallucination that was in the rough rye bread that the peasants had to eat. The noble folk stayed safe and secure in their castles, but even there they weren't safe in the end. Remember "The Red Death" with Vincent Price. Hop Toad, Hop toad.

Then some guy decided to look through one of the first microscopes and the "little creatures" were discovered. Eventually it came to pass that being infected with these could make you sick.

Not only did people die from acute infectious disease back then, but they also died from sepsis when their wounds or injuries became infected. Before antibiotics, the only way to treat an infected limb was to remove it quick, fast, and in a hurry.

Then along came antibiotics and everyone was saved from the infections. They started living a lot longer and died from the chronic diseases instead. Antibiotics were routinely prescribed, even when the infection was viral and they had no effect. People swallowed them like candy.

But they didn't take the antibiotics the way that they should have. Instead of following the instructions on the bottle that told them to "finish all of this medication" they instead took a few pills and when they started feeling better they stopped taking it. That way they had some left over for a "rainy day."

But what this did was make the bacteria resistant to the antibiotics, and that's where we are today. We have only one antibiotic left that can kill all strains of bacteria, and some are even becoming resistant to that one.

But researchers are making some inroads into how bacteria and viruses work. This may lead to new ways to fight them on a genetic level.

According to Medical News Today:

"Staphylococcus aureus strains such as MRSA prefer human blood to that of other mammals because they bind best to human hemoglobin. That contains the iron they need to survive, said US researchers who also suggested genetic variations in hemoglobin may explain why some people are more susceptible to Staph infections than others."

If they could explain the variations and isolate them, that may lead to new ways to fight the bacteria without using antibiotics.

Good old staph has quite a reputation. It's one of the leading causes of skin infections, food-borne infections, and hospital squired infections. The proclivity of bacteria to prefer human hemoglobin for its iron content may also explain why some bacteria infect humans but not animals.

And, it may even be worthwhile for the pharmaceutical companies to develop new antibiotics if they can discover a way to disrupt the process of the bacteria absorbing the iron from the human cell.

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/211685.php